Posts Tagged ‘Rise of Flight’

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Ready to discover once-and-for-all whether X-Plane is better than FSX? Whether Falcon 4.0 is better than Milk Float Simulator 2012? Ready to read the word ‘realism’ 46 times in a single hour, and spit feathers on discovering that the sim that caused got you through your divorce has been cruelly cold-shouldered by an idiot with a bus fetish and a sci-fi blindspot the size of the Crab Nebula? You are? Splendid. You’re in the right place.

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What a con! So far ‘2015’ feels a lot like a re-badged ‘2014’. I know you shouldn’t look a free update in the mouth, but gosh, a few improvements would have been nice. How much longer must we wait for that Ebola fix… that promised ‘Peace in South Sudan’ scenario? Surely ISIL-seeking killer bees and colourblind-friendly rainbows don’t take that long to code. I’m beginning to think the devs behind this cruel-yet-compelling massively-multiplayer Homo sapiens sim don’t care a jot for us end users. Read the rest of this entry »

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Manfred von Richthofen’s final flight – the facts you won’t find in any book or documentary:

Fact 1. If letters written by his batman, Andreas Krantz, circa 1929 are to be believed, in the weeks leading up to his death, the increasingly withdrawn Richthofen spent many hours poring over medieval bestiaries in the library at Chateau d’Arandeau. Fact 2. On April 19, 1918, two days before his death, Richthofen instructed Jasta 11’s chief mechanic to commence work on a fully enclosed cockpit canopy – the first of its kind in military aviation. Fact 3. Reports that Dr.1 425/17 was undamaged when it crash-landed at Vaux-sur-Somme were disputed by at least one eyewitness. Gunner Edward Kendall recollected seeing large rents in the aircraft’s tail and top plane canvas. Fact 4. According to Bryce Buckland, an Australian chaplain also present at Vaux-sur-Somme, though Richthofen’s last word was the infamous “Kaput”, the word he was muttering while being lifted from the cockpit was “Greif” not “Angriff”. Read the rest of this entry »

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We spent the morning prodding it with anti-tank rifle rounds and DP bursts, and the afternoon nudging it with mortar bombs and rifle grenades. Nothing worked. The sun was disappearing into a hole in the museum roof when Persikov turned up with the captured flamethrower. “The trouble with you city boys is you don’t know no zoology! Give me covering fire and I’ll show you how it’s done”. So he scampers out to Tram Crater and starts hosing the statue with liquid flame. Almost instantly there’s a sound like ice cracking, and that stout stone tail starts lashing. Cheers echo round the square as The Beast, still dripping fire, waddles out of the ring and heads towards Krautland. Fifteen minutes later the screaming begins. Read the rest of this entry »

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I would have written this post a great deal more quickly but I accidentally got Stoned while doing a quick spot of research. Fear not – nobody’s been pelting me with rocks and I haven’t decided that the only way to write about flight sims is in a herbal haze. I did make the mistake of checking the writings of Tim Stone in historical Flare Path briefings and that was, as ever, like entering a world of exciting things that I know so little about. Did you know that pilots in WWI flight sim, Rise of Flight, have sidearms in the cockpit with them? 777 Studios were behind that game and 1C have handed them development duties on the WWII Eastern Front sequel.

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13.55. Spot a ‘there’ where there should be a ‘their’. Hurriedly rectify. 13.56. Discover a ‘their’ where there should be a ‘there’. Hurriedly rectify. 13.57. Notice a ‘there’ where there should be a ‘they’re’. Shake fist at English language. Hurriedly rectify. 13.58. Spy a wan ‘wont’ wantonly wanting an apostrophe. Hurriedly rectify. 13.59. Wander, knot fore the thirst thyme, if I’m cut out for this writing-about-games lark. 14.00. Press ‘PUBLISH’ then sink into armchair while exhaling like a bullet-riddled Beaufighter tyre.Read the rest of this entry »

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“They’ve found her!”. 5 seconds ago I was fast asleep. “Ekrem, is that you? Do you know what time it is here?”. “Listen. HMS Clytemnestra has been found.”. The words are ice-water hurled into my pillow-creased face. Warm feet slap cold floor tiles. “Where?”. “Are you sitting down?” .“WHERE?”. “You won’t believe this. She’s in the middle of the Gobi Desert.”. Read the rest of this entry »

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It’s that time of the week again, that time when Shermans and StuGs stop squabbling, Albatrosses and Camels play football together in no-man’s-land, and rust-streaked U-boats sidle up to exhausted Victory Ships and start nuzzling them like thirsty calves. The Flare Path has been lit, and today its flickering rectangular finger points towards an important flight sim demo, some classified campaign intel, a festival of formation flying, and a sim studio not too proud to beg. Read the rest of this entry »

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There are many different ways of gathering sim and wargame news. Me, I like to get up at the crack of dawn, grab my metal detector, and head into the forests that surround my hometown. It’s amazing what you find amongst the pines and birches: press releases, beta announcements, busts of Hitler, bog-entombed T-70s… Why, just yesterday I discovered a cache of Steel Beasts Pro Personal Edition info, a Ski Region Simulator demo, and some pages from a Rise of Flight diary stuffed into the barrel of an ivy-shrouded Jagdtiger.

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Usually a radio-controlled Zeppelin or the promise of a footplate ride on an elderly diesel loco, is enough to get a dev or publisher game coverage in the The Flare Path. This week however, bungs alone are insufficient. The three lovelies lionised south of the jump all earned their places through Sheer Merit. Well, Sheer Merit and a Shared Moniker, if you want to be pedantic. Meine Damen und Herren, I give you Iron Cross, Iron Cross, and Rise of Flight: The Iron Cross Edition.

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There’s a lot of news to pack into this week’s Flare Path and 80% of it has wings. If you want to make yourself useful, start loading those crates marked FlightGear. Stack them neatly and there should be room for the sacks of Rise of Flight on top. I’ve got these boxes of X-Plane to stow, then I really need to get those barrels of Cliffs of Dover in out of the sun and lashed down. God knows where we’re going to put the Achtung Panzer.

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WWI boffins came up with various solutions to the Western Front mud problem – floating roadways, artillery shells that spread sawdust, boots in the shape of boats, snorkels… By far the cleverest though was a device called the Aero Plane. Essentially a winged car made of kindling, piano-wire and old big-top canvas (hence Richthofen’s Flying Circus) these machines allowed soldiers to fight and stay clean. Rise of Flight, the beta of which I’ve been dabbling with for the last couple of days, celebrates this momentous military breakthrough in an uncommonly realistic manner.

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This week, surrounded by the pale primroses, fluttering brimstones and murmuring bumble-bees of a burgeoning English spring, my thoughts have naturally turned to simulated killing machines. eSim, the makers of the superb if depressingly shadow-free Steel Beasts Pro armour sim, have been sharing details of an imminent upgrade pack. Preview footage of the lyrically titled 2.460 expansion shows-off a bevy of new playable vehicles including a UAV and several unfamiliar European IFVs modelled originally, one would imagine, for the dev’s various military customers.